Let me describe a great game to you.

dtan27 · July 2008

Let's start that maybe some of you already know what this game is, but keep reading and maybe it wasn't the game you thought it was. This will be long. This will be a WALL of text. You have been warned.

Combat. The main focus of this game is naturally combat. It's turn based, but don't let that fool you. Each side has 30 seconds to move. BUT don't let that fool you since you control up to 8 other "mercs" on your team. Very early in the game you will have 3 other "mercs' you control.

Before combat begins you assign yourself into a formation. You can place yourself and your mercs into a 3x3 grid. With the Front, Middle and Back rows having significant tactical advantages. The Front row is of course where you'd want your "tank" types to be. The Middle row would be your "dps" types and your Back row would be your "support" types.

A few simple rules apply. You can not attack someone unless there is no one else in front of them. You can not attack someone who is flying with a melee attack.

The different classes of mercs that you can get (some will have to be quested for) has different types of attacks that they can do. Some can attack an entire row. Some can attack an entire column. Some can anyone regardless of whether or not there is someone already in front of them, and so on.

Each class can learn abilities (assuming you find the spell books for them) that can supplement their lack of area attacks or support abilities.

Crafting. You can craft pretty much everything you can imagine in the game. Armor, Helmet, Pants, Gauntlets, Rings, Guns, Bullets, Food, Potions, etc. The best thing about the crafting is that you get most if not all the materials from hunting mobs. Also, the way you craft items is you queue up a craft you want to do, and you obtain a 'workload', which you work off by doing combat (which you were already going to do anyway).

The other thing about crafting in this game is that you have a chance to get an 'enhanced' item through luck. So you could end up with a +3 item on a craft. You can even queue up to 15 items to craft, provided you have enough materials for it. It will just be a huge workload that may take a bit of combat to work off, but you were going to do that anyway.

If you're not so lucky with getting +3 on a craft, no need to fear, you can combine two items to enchant it. So if you had 2 +1 items, you could combine them and it would turn into a +2, and you could repeat this until it maxed out at +10. The best thing about this is that it always works and you'll never lose the item because of bad luck. You don't have to pray to some god or add some super expensive item to raise your chances of it. As long as you have 2 +9 items, you will always succeed in making it into a +10 item if you combine them.

By the way, I forgot to mention that you don't have to "grind" on things necessarily if you don't want to. If you just follow the quests and do the objectives you will level up fine. Some of these quests actually ask you to type in the answer (which is easily enough found).

The World. I'll admit that I don't have quite the grasp of the story yet, but it seems to be a future post apocalyptic Earth. You start out in the East Asia region in China with some known locales such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, etc.. and gradually you will wander the world and you can even end up in New York, Rome. Heck, someone might even learn some geography while playing! These cities you can "own" by having enough guild points earned by your guild. I haven't delved into this aspect myself yet, but I know that beyond owning city, you can also own a nation!

Game information. This is where the game sets itself apart from most other mmo's. The game has a built-in "Thottbot"-like functionality in it. If you've never heard of thottbot I'm not sure where you've been. But think of it like a "wikipediea" website for game information. In this "book" you can find information on every item in the game, what it takes to craft it, where to find it, who drops it. You can find where crafting NPCs and quest NPCs are. You can even see what quests you can pick up. (It shows you the level you need to be and the NPC who starts the quest). This book will contain information on monsters you've killed and you can "unlock" information on monsters as you fight them and gradually you will be able to see all the items that a particular monster can drop and their drop rate.

Don't have information on a particular monster? No problem! Ask in chat and someone who has it can "share" this information with you! That's right! Got enough exp to level up your crafting skill? Find someone who is more skilled than you and have them teach you for free! (The teacher gets exp for teaching you, and you get a free skill up, both win).

One of the first things you will notice right off the bat if you bother to try the game out is that there's a little function known as ALT+R. AUTO-MOVE!!

This can auto-move you to your next quest destination, a specific NPC, a town you've previously visited. Or even a monster that you have enough information on! That's right! You don't have to click anywhere, just hit ALT+R and it takes you there for you!!!

By the way, this isn't simple a Point and Click game. You CAN use WASD to move. Each of your "merc" can be assigned a hotkey (1-9) for simple choosing. In fact most if not all abilities have keyboard shortcuts assigned to them to minimize requiring point and click.

Graphics. Graphically the game isn't bad. I'll say it now that the graphics are better than Warhammer Online in it's current state. Make of that what you will, but to me the graphics are pretty good considering everything else the game offers.

Multiplayer. As an MMO the ability to group up is somewhat important to me. However I do prefer to have smaller groups. In here you can only have 3 players MAX in a group. As you can imagine though, when each player has to control up to 8 merc, that gives your side 27 people to work with. In a group environment though, each SIDE has 30 seconds to move, This means that your groupmates move at the same time you do. You can coordinate and have everyone attack a specific mob or you can just attack willy nilly. Grouping is pretty fun though, as it makes things a bit easier and you get an exp bonus for doing it. In some of the dungeon areas, grouping helps a bit more, as mobs have a tendency to come in groups of 2 or 3 and sometimes even while you're in the middle of a battle a mob can come in! Good news though, players can do that too! That's right. If your group mate gets into a combat and you were too far away, no need to fret, when you get there you can join in on his combat!

Unfortunately I am afraid that this game will just fall by the wayside because no one will give it the chance that it deserves for breaking away from traditional mmo game design.

Anyway, I've already wrote much more than the capacity of most people to want to read, but there's still quite more information to be given about this game. In any case you can ask away and I will answer specific questions people may have.

Thanks for reading.

p.s. I am not going to name this game by the way, because someone will just chime in and claim I'm "advertising" and something about my low post count or some such nonsense like that. But I'm sure some of you will know what game I am talking about.